In other words, Nolan Thompson held Aaron Toomey and Willy Workman to a combined 11 points in 55 minutes on 5-14 shooting. In those 55 minutes, in a game in which there were 43 fouls called and 3 Middlebury starters fouled out, while guarding the best players on the floor, Nolan committed one personal foul; it was intentional. Nolan was also the only player on either team to never go to the bench for all 55.

Think about this: What percent of the NESCAC first + second team has been shut down by Nolan Thompson this season? Vadas, Ferris, Epley, Shasha (watch the tape), Toomey, and Workman all come to mind right away. Those are probably the top six players in the league who aren’t either 1) his teammate, 2) a center, or 3) Nolan himself.

Nolan is just doing something that really deserves to be appreciated. Congratulations to Amherst on an amazing win.”

One Response to “Middlebury Loses to Amherst in Thriller”

clubbo wrote:

Guys- think your rightful elevation of NolanT. to POY is spot on. He’s done everything asked of him and although some of the others have better numbers on the ‘O’, only Workman is in the same zip code defensively- but he’s still not the impact player on ‘D’ that Nolan is. To me- let Toomey battle out Joey for POY next year. Mayer and Willy are not there -even on the stats, as far as impact players. Mayer in particular. Why do you think Maker is having TheEphs play so much zone? They’re not good enough in the m-m and Mayer’s part of that. Workman feeds off a lot of the coverages on Toomey, and would probably be a lot less effective on his own,which is another reason to go with a defensive guy- which BTW almost never happens in BBall award situations.From here, of course I’m biased- it’s Nolan, without even a photo-finish camera.

It’s clear that you’ve done all your homework on Wesleyan and the only perspective your lacking is one you can have because of the geography. That’s where I may have an edge because I’ve seen Shasha and Callaghan et al. probably 15 times over their careers. In the areas that you can’t quantify, the first thing that was noticeable this year was that the chemistry was different. Wes., 20 and 6 last year lost only Mendel, but wasn’t (and hasn’t) been the same team. Do not know what caused this but Mendel gave them the bail-out guy from ‘3’, when or if Shasha or Beresford drove the ball. Not there this time around. Due to that or becoming seniors, there has been more than a tendency for Shasha, Callaghan, and Beresford to give up the ‘O’ plan and try to do it on their own. That thinking is counter-productive to a consistent ‘O’, and it shows in the 12 and 12. Thirdly they are very susceptible to a zone as you have noted because it takes away from slash-and-pop or dish. And although Callaghan has improved over his career (like Williamson) from outside, mentally he’s still an inside player. Beresford strictly a catch-shoot kid prior has been putting it on the floor this year. That’s good for any opponent. Not big enough to finish in traffic, he’s not a great passer either. Finally- with possible exception of Galvin- they do not have a zone breaker- that dial up jump shooter who alone can change the game flow. In toto, the longer Midd can zone them the better in my view, because Shasha will get frustrated- almost always over dribbling- which causes everybody else to stand around. My take is that he has regressed from where he was on the team ‘O’ page last year back to his early soph.-type season. That’s good for us. Go Panthers! Talk soon. Clubbo.